Morning Joe - Morning Joe 3/1/23

Episode Date: March 1, 2023

House Committee on China competition holds first hearing

Do you believe that China has taken the appropriate steps to make a future lab leak less likely? I think that the system that's in place in China does not permit for or prize serious safety. We've seen multiple leaks of dangerous pathogens out of Chinese laboratories over the years. We've seen fatal leaks from Chinese government labs by their own admission of the original SARS coronavirus. This is the 2002, 2003 virus. A concerning statement from the former deputy national security adviser to President Trump amid all the coverage this week of the origins of covid. Those comments were delivered to a new House select committee on China. We have a lot to get to this morning from that panel's prime time hearing. Meanwhile,

a trip to China by a Putin ally is increasing concerns that Beijing will ramp up support for Russian forces. Back here at home, President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness plan went before the Supreme Court yesterday with the conservative majority expressing some skepticism about wiping away debt for some borrowers. Also ahead, reaction to an historic defeat in Chicago. For the first time in four decades, the city's mayor has lost a reelection bid. We'll get to that. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Wednesday, March 1st. Joe has the morning off. But along with Willie and me, we have, of course, the host of Way Too Early, White House Bureau Chief of Politico, Jonathan Lemire, U.S. special correspondent for BBC News, Katty Kaye, and the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haas, is with us this morning.

And Willie, don't look now. I can't believe it. But we actually saw at least on one issue bipartisanship happening. There was at least one night of bipartisanship. Let's see how long it lasts. That new House Select Committee on the strategic competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party held its first hearing last night. It was a primetime session and a bipartisan group of lawmakers set the stage for what Republican Chairman Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin called an existential struggle over the future of America. We may call this a strategic competition, but it's not a polite tennis match. This is an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century. And the most fundamental

freedoms are at stake. To kick things off, the panel played this video detailing the human rights abuses carried out by the Chinese government over the years, from the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 to the alleged rape and torture of Uyghurs in China today. The committee also brought in four witnesses to answer questions about a wide-ranging number of topics, including Taiwan's independence from China, China's purchasing of farmland in the United States, and security concerns surrounding Americans' use of the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok. TikTok is already one of the most powerful media companies in American history, and it's

still growing. It's not just dances and kids stuff. It gives the Chinese Communist Party the ability to manipulate our social discourse, the news to censor and suppress or to amplify what tens of millions of Americans see and read and experience and hear. So, Richard Haass, you were not at that meeting in primetime last night, but you did sit before the House Intel Committee on Capitol Hill yesterday to talk about this very subject. We'll get into some of the specifics around China, spy balloons, support for Russia, TikTok. But what were your impressions generally as you sat before that committee?

But all those who always say we need more bipartisanship in America, they want to Be careful what you wish for comes to mind. There is a degree of extreme antipathy about China. I heard more things yesterday about we're already in a Cold War, that the goal of the United States has to be to unseat the Communist Party of China, essentially bring about regime change in China. This is from congressmen. Yeah. And what you heard last night there, it's there. The the degree of animosity towards China is hard to exaggerate. And the question is this. It's all against the backdrop. This is the most fundamental relationship of the 21st century. And I'm not here defending China, but I do think we still have some important interests in what we try to avoid that we do not want to conflict with relationship of the 21st century. And I'm not here defending China, but I do think we still have some important interests in what we try to avoid there. We do not want to conflict with China.

Our ability to tackle regional and global challenges at the United States and China are in a Cold War relationship goes down to zero. So I almost feel like we haven't, you know, we're obviously focusing on other things, including Ukraine, for good reason. And we'll talk about that. What China does or doesn't do in Ukraine will have real consequences. But this is the big foreign policy conversation that will have consequences for decades to come. I almost feel that we're not watching the ball here. And as you say, it's bipartisan. It's not just Republicans you might expect to hear this from, but it's Democrats as well,

signaling that there is a hostility toward China, some of it well-earned in many ways. What was the focus of your testimony, though, yesterday? What message did you want to get across to these men and women? My focus was on intelligence and the whole question is, how does the United States think about intelligence in the world we're in? And one of my arguments was, yeah, we need to think about China, but we can't have just China in the same way we had the Soviet Union during the Cold War. We've also got Russia. We've got North Korea. We've got Iran. We've got climate change. We've got pandemics. We've got Pakistan, which is falling apart. I mean, this is a world where we almost don't have the luxury there. We talked a lot about that.

I talked a lot about open sources. Here we are. We're thinking about secrets, but we're flooded with information. How does an intelligence community that's meant to focus on secrets, how does it deal with the fact that you've got all this open stuff, some of what's accurate, some of what's not? How does it integrate it into its analysis? So it was a real question, how do you have a 21st century intelligence community that serves American national security? And it's interesting that the rhetoric yesterday on the Hill has gotten out ahead of where the White House is. President Biden has tried to tamp some of this down. He keeps referring to, though he keeps referring to the relationship with China as sort of the defining one of the

next century, he keeps saying how it should be a competition and not a conflict. And it seems some of the rhetoric, Willie, yesterday almost feel like some of these lawmakers were heading in that direction. And of course, it comes at a backdrop of the issue of the Chinese spy balloon, these concerns about China sending lethal aid to Moscow. We heard strong statements from Secretary of State Blinken in Central Asia warning against that. And of course, the ongoing developments with the origins of COVID and China's refusal to cooperate with that probe. And Mika, on that point, you had the director of the FBI yesterday saying in no uncertain terms that the FBI, in addition to the Department of Energy, which we've been talking about for the

last couple of days, that the FBI believes in the lab leak theory as well. Yeah, the director of the FBI says China is blocking efforts by the United States and others to investigate the origins of covid. In an interview with Fox News, Christopher Wray said the agency has assessed that the virus most likely came from a potential lab incident in Wuhan. I should add that that our work related to this continues and there are not a whole lot of details I can share that aren't classified. I will just make the observation that the Chinese government, it seems to me, has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate the work here, the work that we're doing, the work that our U.S. government and close foreign partners are doing.

And that's unfortunate for everybody. And there's not a complete agreement on this in the intelligence community, Katty. Talk about the degree of delicacy that perhaps we didn't see last night. I think Richard really nailed it when he talked about this being the or one of the fundamental relationships of our time. And while the hostility toward China might be well earned, I was reading my dad's book from his time in the White House, Power and Principle. And in the back of the book, he has a memo, the actual picture of it that Carter sent to him before he sent my dad to China. And it was all about balancing interests, concerns they may have with strong messages that need to be sent. It was so similar in some ways that yet add in COVID

and today's challenges. Yeah, I mean, similar, but I think there was probably more optimism that there could be a relationship that was more balanced than there is today in the United States. And because of the deterioration in U.S. Sino relations, that's also had an impact, for example, in Europe and in the U.K. as well, where things have got more frosty with China as well over technology. But I think, you know, you're right to point out that there's some division in the intelligence communities over the degree of confidence with which anyone knows whether this came from a lab or came from that market. And I think the important thing about the Select Committee is that they keep the

bipartisanship that they have and that they don't let statements like we've had out of China this morning kind of force the sort of polarization that we've seen in American politics, where this becomes a tit for tat with Republicans saying, look, we said it was from a lab. And Dr. Fauci, for example, didn't agree with us that it was from a lab and he was saying it was from the market. And you could see some of that already in some of the more extreme kind of pro Trump voices around the reports that the U.S. intelligence, the FBI thinks this did come from a lab. So I think the real job of the committee is to keep the bipartisan, the bipartisanship on China policy together and not let this become another victim of American division over over almost every issue between left and right. Pretty clear statement, Richard, from Director Wray about the FBI's position on this.

The Department of Energy had said it had low confidence, but it did believe it was the lab leak. But at the heart of this, the reason that we're getting these divergent opinions from our own intelligence services is that China just hasn't cooperated. We haven't been able to get in and find out what happened in that lab. I haven't been able to get in and find out what happened at that market. They have sealed off. And they despite their claims today that they have been providing information to the United States. It's a guessing game in many ways. Willie, you're a diplomat. You say that China hasn't cooperated.

They have destroyed every piece of evidence. And they've scrubbed that town. CIT jepped for that. They've scrubbed that town within an inch of its life. Yeah. And look, you'd have to believe in a lot of coincidences that Wuhan, which is the site of all these institutions that are involved in this kind of research, that it's somehow just a coincidence that it's the wet markets there. I lean in the direction. Again, I don't have hard proof, but again, I don't believe in coincidences.

So I tend to lean in the direction that it came from a lab, not purposely, but accidentally. The fact that the Chinese have gone to such extraordinary lengths to cover it up reinforces that view. If it was something out of the wet markets, why wouldn't they be cooperating? It would exonerate them. We could learn from it. So it's very hard to be dismissive of the lab theory. I want to say one other thing, connecting yesterday on the Hill, I was thinking about it. The China argument is also entering the Ukraine conversation. Really interesting. A lot of the Republican congressmen whose enthusiasm for what we're doing with Ukraine is limited are now using China as the argument. They're saying we're so depleting our stocks in order to support Ukraine. It's not

it's putting us in a poor position and it might tempt China to be more likely to move against Taiwan. It's really interesting how this is now entering every other foreign policy conversation. And that nexus was on display with China and Ukraine yesterday when Belarusian President Putin ally Alexander Lukashenko visited China. He's there right now at the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping. The U.S. says it views the trip as another sign of China's growing ties to the Kremlin as Belarus operates as part of a union state with Russia. Lukashenko is expected to meet with Chinese President Xi sometime this week in an effort to gain economic support amid Western sanctions. Back in Russia, The Wall Street Journal reporting that nation increasingly is turning toward using Chinese currency as an alternative to the Russian ruble.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, as John just mentioned, has issued a new warning to China about providing lethal support to Russia in the ongoing war in Ukraine. Here's what Blinken said yesterday while traveling in Central Asia. The reason that I raised this not only with Wang Yi last week, but also publicly, along with other colleagues in the administration, is because of concern we have based on information that we have that China is considering moving beyond the non-lethal support that some of its companies have been providing to actually lethal material support for Russia's war effort in Ukraine. And what I can share with you is that we did

very clearly warn China about the implications and consequences of going through with providing such support. We will not hesitate, for example, to target Chinese companies or individuals that violate our sanctions or otherwise engage in supporting the Russian war effort. So, John, the Biden administration clearly wants it to be known publicly that they think China is moving toward providing lethal aid. We've moved from leaks to the Wall Street Journal now to the secretary of state publicly, effectively saying that and warning China not to take that step, which would be, in their view, a big escalation in the war. It's reminiscent of how the administration behaved in the days right before the

Russia's invasion of Ukraine, where they were very public with its warnings, putting out their intelligence that usually they would keep behind closed doors. And it's an effort to try to deter China, to try to suggest you don't want to do this. They already believe that China's increased its non-lethal assistance to Moscow, and they're willing to let some of that go. But the red line for President Biden, and he said so to President Xi in the early days of the conflict, is don't send them weapons. And now they believe there's at least a chance that they could do that. And they're threatening sanctions. So, Katty, my question to you is the United States is talking tough to China,

saying they'll offer these sanctions. China suggests their economy is too big for that to matter. We'll see. But do you think Europe will follow in lockstep? You're in London there. There's been such unity in this alliance to this point, the U.S. driving the way on much of it. But there's a lot of European countries that also have very deep ties to China. Would they follow suit from the administration's tough rhetoric? Look, very deep ties to China economically in Europe and traditionally more skepticism about alienating China than there has been here in the United States.

And the UK has fallen in line, for example, over Huawei and Chinese technology in UK mobile phones with the US position. They basically bowed to American demands that they do so. I don't think you're going to have European leaders speaking out as forcefully as you have American leaders. I mean, this development on the American side raises some questions like, we still don't know what the intelligence is that has led Blinken to speak out about this publicly. I've been hearing this from the Hill for the last two or three weeks, that this is the biggest concern. And if you talk to people about the Ukraine war and you ask what could be the game changer, then Chinese weapons to the Russians would be potentially a

big game changer in the trajectory of the war in Ukraine. But I don't see, we certainly haven't heard them yet, European voices taking the lead on this. At the moment, this is an American effort. And America has more power to exert its influence over China at the moment. The economic ties are still very strong. So they do have some some influence, they believe, which must be why they're speaking out publicly as forcefully as they are. All right. We are going to return to this conversation. We have the ranking member of the subcommittee coming up in our next hour. So we'll return to this. But other news now, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is asking the CEO of Norfolk Southern to testify about the train derailment and toxic chemical spill in East Palestine, Ohio.

That is according to two congressional aides. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is also demanding answers from CEO Alan Shaw. Mr. Shaw, you have an obligation, obligation, after what happened to testify before the Senate. The accident was awful, devastating to the community, worst of all, preventable, according to the NTSB. Norfolk Southern, you've broken your trust with the American people. The American people and, of course, the people of East Palestine deserve answers. A date for the Senate committee hearing has not been set. Norfolk Southern did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether Shaw would testify. We're going to hear from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg about the efforts to hold Norfolk Southern accountable and rail safety regulations. He'll be our guest this morning, a little bit later on Morning Joe. For the first time in 40

years, a mayor of Chicago has lost reelection. Mayor Lori Lightfoot conceded the race last night, ending her historic run as the city's first black woman and first openly gay person to serve in that position. The Democrat failed to get enough votes in the nine person race to advance to an April runoff. Lightfoot's term has been plagued by persistent crime in the city, including gun violence, carjackings and robberies. She has also repeatedly clashed with the Chicago Teachers Union, police, rank and file and the media. I'm internally grateful to everyone who gave us their time, support and money and prayers. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. God bless you. God bless this incredible city. It's been the honor of a lifetime to be mayor.

The April 4th runoff will feature two Democrats, Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson and former CEO of Chicago Schools, Paul Ballas. We'll get a live report from Chicago later in the show. And still ahead on Morning Joe, President Biden's plan to ease student loan debt for millions of Americans in the hands of the Supreme Court. And conservative justices seem skeptical. We'll run through yesterday's arguments. Plus, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer appears to question why President Biden's late son, Beau Biden, was never prosecuted. He's obsessed with Biden's family. We'll show you exactly what he had to say. Also ahead, outgoing White House communications director Kate Bedingfield will join the conversation this morning. And former Homeland Security Secretary Jay Johnson will be our guest as DHS celebrates its 20th anniversary. You're watching Morning Joe.

We'll be right back. It shows that Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch admitted some of the network's hosts endorsed false claims about the 2020 election. Today, Fox News promised to focus on real issues, then introduced their newest host, Dilbert. Oh, wow. OK. Welcome back to Morning Joe. It's 24 past the hour. I guess we should give Trump a moment to not watch because he doesn't want to get triggered, Willie. Here we go. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is considering visiting some key primary states as he touts his new book. The cross country tour kicked off yesterday and includes plan stops in California, Alabama and Texas. Now, according to a source familiar with his plans, the governor is also looking at visiting Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and possibly South Carolina. DeSantis has long been speculated to run for president, but he has yet to make a formal announcement. Keep not watching.

Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump remains on the offensive against DeSantis ahead of any potential White House bid. He again took aim at the Florida governor on social media with Trump writing DeSantis quote, wanted to cut social security and raise the minimum age to at least 70, at least four times. Likewise with Medicare wanted big cuts. He's a wheelchair off the cliff kind of guy. Hey, Trump also claimed Fox News is promoting DeSantis, writing, quote, the new Fox poll, which have always been purposefully terrible for me, has Trump crushing DeSanctimonious. He's back to DeSanctimonious. But they rarely show it.

Willie, the meatball is getting to him. It's he's obsessed with the meatball, although he won't stick with that name. No, he likes DeSanctimonious. No, no, it's a mistake, I think. He's got better. But let's talk about the substance of this, this book tour that Rhonda Santus is on. Perhaps it's just a coincidence there are nice bookstores in Des Moines and Manchester, Charleston, South Carolina. He's also going to the Reagan Library to an event, which is obviously a big step to sort of touch that stone.

Is this a sort of informal announcement that he's running for president or at least some kind of exploration of that? And clearly, as we've said 100 times now on this show, Donald Trump is worried about one person and one person only in this race. And that's borne out by polling, by the way. There's only one person at this point that he needs to be worried about. Yeah, it certainly looks like a soft launch for DeSantis, but he's got some time. His team has said that he can't really do anything until the Florida legislative session wraps up. That's not till May or June. Also, there's actually a Florida state law that a current state officeholder can't seek another office. So he'd have to get that law changed.

But his rather subservient Republican state legislature likely will do that for him. So that shouldn't be an obstacle for DeSantis. The itinerary is telling, and so is Trump's response. As we know, he is focused on one candidate, one candidate only. He hasn't said much about Nikki Haley, for instance. He sees the polls. He sees that DeSantis, a big wheelchair off the cliff guy, is the threat, whatever that means. But there are two things we should note here.

The criticism of Fox News, again, where Trump is clearly unhappy with the amount of airtime DeSantis is getting. He knows how important Fox News will be to a GOP primary early next year. And then secondly, breaking with some of the party here about Medicare and Social Security, which has been a popular issue for the Biden White House to paint Republicans with the Rick Scott plan, et cetera. Some Republicans have offered some support for it, but Trump has been clearly against it. He has viewed that a political loser and he's trying to attach DeSantis to it. And that's the wheelchair off the cliff, the idea that they're going to push the elderly

people who benefit from Social Security and Medicare off the cliff. That's what he's referring to there, Richard. As a veteran of Republican politics from a different time, perhaps, what do you make of the way this race is starting to take a little bit of shape and DeSantis sending all these signals that he may step up and run against Donald Trump? Clearly. What's also interesting, though, is where DeSantis doesn't seem to differ from Trump that much, which is on foreign policy. His initial statements, particularly about Ukraine, sounded positively Trumpist, much more concerned about the southern border of the United States and the border with Ukraine or something. And the person out there who seems to be more of the larger national security point of view is Nikki Haley. So one of the questions is this is not simply whether you have Republican differences over the size of government or any number of other

issues, but whether some of the old foreign policy debates almost between the neocons, the America firsters. I don't know if you're going to have any traditionalists like I used to be. But I think we're beginning to see that. I'll be curious, you know, with Pompeo, who will be very anti-Chinese, assuming when he comes out, I don't know where Pence is going to come out. But I'm curious to see where does the Republican field come out. And obviously, going back to what Jonathan was talking about, the bigger the field, the better for Donald Trump, who's obviously hoping that the anti-Trump is split to vote and he still gets the plurality. You touched on it, but Governor DeSantis effectively

said in an interview last week, Russia's aims don't go far beyond Ukraine. They're not much to worry about. Yes, Ukraine is bad, but I wouldn't worry about the rest of Europe, which will come as news to the Bucharest Nine and other members of NATO. No, but it's very much it's going to we focus so much on the person of Donald Trump, to me, at least as important or significant will be Trump ism and to see to what extent beyond him does his ideas essentially become the future of this Republican Party and at least in foreign policy right now, if Trump and DeSantis are the two leading candidates, they're actually in a pretty similar place. And we should note, of course, not on DeSantis' itinerary, CPAC, which kicks off later this week, just outside Washington, D.C. Very Trump-friendly crowd. The former

president going to address the group there on Saturday. DeSantis wants nothing to do with it. So we are going to have this sort of split screen between the two current heavyweights of the Republican Party. And they'll be at the club for growth. There seems to be a divide there where candidates are going. Coming up here, a federal investigation into the use of child labor by a major sanitation company is prompting now a nationwide crackdown. NBC News Homeland Security correspondent Julia Ainslie joins us with some new reporting on that. We're coming right back. Good morning, Joe. Just over half past the hour, a live look at the White House. Beautiful day in Washington. Last week, we told you about a federal investigation

underway that found more than 100 children working dangerous jobs cleaning a slaughterhouse. Well, this morning we have an update. The Biden administration is taking action against the growing epidemic of migrant children working in violation of child labor laws. Joining us now, NBC News Homeland Security correspondent Julia Ainslie. Julia, what more have you learned? Well, we've learned that now the Labor Department and HHS, Health and Human Services, which oversees the unaccompanied children who cross the border, will be working together now. That's in large part because most of these children we're talking about, Mika, are unaccompanied children, migrants who cross the border and then are either going to places where they're not properly taken care of or finding their ways through some circumstance into these slaughterhouses.

In the case that we reported or as New York Times reported in hundreds of companies across the country where they're doing jobs that they're not supposed to be doing under child labor laws. Oftentimes it's to repay a debt to smugglers that brought them here. And now we're going to see a larger crackdown. In addition to the interagency effort where they're going to really sharpen their claws looking at these investigations, they're also calling on Congress to increase the fines for companies. In the case of the company, PSSI, that that we featured where they had children, they found over 102 children working, cleaning slaughterhouses in the middle of the night. That company paid $1.5 million as a fine.

A lot of labor advocates, immigration advocates, people who work with these children say that's not enough for a company like this that's raking in such a high profit. And actually, some of the labor investigators agree, but that's the maximum they could charge based on the penalty for hiring children to do these jobs that they should not be allowed to do under child labor laws. I will say PSSI says they've been fully cooperative and they've paid that fine. But what labor wants, what HHS wants is a steeper penalty because they say this is happening in the dark of night across the country. And it's only when people come forward that labor can even get a warrant

to go in and examine these companies. And so they want there to be more done, not only to penalize the companies, but also to track the children, to make sure that when they shut down one slaughterhouse, they're not just getting hired somewhere else down the road and continue to be exploited. Yeah. It seems like we're just scratching the surface at this problem, Julia. And I'm curious, like how young are these kids? How do they track them? Do they, do we know how many there are out there being used in the middle of the night and what kinds of jobs are are they doing beyond working in a slaughterhouse? Well, in our case, in the company we featured, they found children between the ages of 13 to 17. People we met who met those children said there's no way that a 13-year-old could look like an 18-year-old or the 30-year-old that they presented on their identification. But

of course, in that blockbuster new reporting from Hannah Dreyer at New York Times over the weekend, she talked to 100 children, more than that, across the country working in jobs like these. She found them doing things like sewing in labels into J.Crew clothing that says made in the USA. She found them packing foods that you and I eat foods. I feed my children into boxes on conveyor belts. These oftentimes are very dangerous jobs. That's something I want to point out. A lot of people say, you know what? I worked as a lifeguard over the summer. I scooped ice cream. Those are jobs that children are legally allowed to have at a certain age of this country, depending on the job, depending on the age and sometimes depending on the state. But we're talking about very dangerous

jobs. And these slaughterhouses, these were machines that had killed adults in some cases. They're cleaning up blood and animal parts off of the floor and then going to school the next day, just to put in context of the jobs we're talking about here. NBC News Homeland Security correspondent Julia Ainsley, thank you for your reporting. We'll look forward to more on that. Willie? Joining us now, former Secretary of Homeland Security under President Obama, Jay Johnson. Today is the 20th anniversary of the formation of the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Secretary, good to see you today. Thanks, Willie.

So I was checking the dates, the March 1st, 2003, 18 months after September 11th, Homeland Security, Department of Homeland Security was formed. How has it evolved over those 20 years as something to protect our country, our borders after the horrifying attacks of 9-11 to now something that primarily and in this moment anyway, is looking at the southern border of this country and the chaos that's happening down there? Willie, I think the better question is how have circumstances evolved and has DHS kept up with those circumstances? So as everybody knows, the Department of Homeland Security was created in the wake of 9-11,

in reaction to 9-11. For the longest time, this nation believed we did not need any sort of Ministry of the Interior or Department of Public Safety because we had two oceans to protect us from the rest of the world. At the time, in 2002, 2003, Congress thought that the way to deal with terrorism, and terrorism was the reason the department was created, the way to deal with terrorism was to better secure our borders. Terrorism was regarded then as an extraterritorial threat from beyond our borders. And if you put into one cabinet-level department all the different ways of regulating how someone enters this country, land, sea, and air, TSA, Coast Guard, Customs, Border Patrol, you've effectively dealt with terrorism. That's an outdated way of looking at terrorism.

Most terrorist attacks these days are domestic-based, domestic in nature, and there are not a whole lot of DHS cops running around the world, around the country, the interior of the country. The good news is that DHS has, I think, taken on well the cybersecurity mission, which didn't really exist in 2003. Through CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is part of DHS, and through the able leadership of first Chris Krebs and now Jen Easterly, I think DHS is well positioned to try to address our cybersecurity threats in this country. But and the people in DHS don't really

like to admit this. The department is overwhelmed by the southern border. Yeah. And to the exclusion of a lot of other challenges we face right now. And you've called it a crisis on this show for a long time. What's happening at the southern border? That's undeniable. There are now Republicans in power in the House calling for the resignation or the impeachment, perhaps, of Secretary Mayorkas. What is the role and responsibility of the Homeland Department, Homeland Security at the southern border as it fits into all these other agencies as well? Well, of course, there's the Border Patrol. There's customs at the ports. There's ICE that detains and removes people. And the problem now on the southern border, frankly, is much bigger than it was eight, nine years ago when I owned this problem.

The capabilities to deal with the problem are also much bigger. The scale of our resources on the southern border is much bigger, yet we still struggle to keep up. There are new initiatives that DHS announced a couple of weeks ago to try to encourage people to enter the country the right way versus the wrong way to be considered for asylum. But this all tracks back to whether you're talking about migrant children working in slaughterhouses or the numbers on the southern border. It all tracks back to the circumstances that exist in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. And as long as those nations are as unstable, violent, corrupt, and impoverished as they are, we're going to keep dealing with this problem over and over,

administration after administration. So, Mr. Secretary, you, of course, very familiar with the federal bureaucracy and how agencies can have differing opinions. Wanted to get you in on this idea from the Department of Energy, its report that it has a low confidence in this belief that COVID leaked from a lab there in China. We heard from FBI Director Wray, though, voicing a little more support for that theory, more confidence to it. Give us, just explain to the viewers what that means, the divergence of opinions, and what needs to be done here potentially beyond China, of course, cooperating. But just explain the schism in the federal government over this particular matter.

So Richard will have some insights on this, too. When I heard that report, I imagined how I would react if I were still in office reading the daily intelligence briefings. If I saw a division of opinion among intelligence agencies on a conclusion and there's a minority view out there with low confidence, I wouldn't make much of that. I certainly would not make any major policy choices based on what I'm reading. And very often when I was in office and I would read something from an intelligence agency with a dissent, I'd say to my people, bring the analyst who wrote the one opinion and the dissenting opinion up here,

and I want to talk to them directly. And very often when you probe the differences of view, you find that there's an assumption that one makes that the other doesn't make. But when you're faced with this kind of division, it's not a circumstance where you make a major policy choice or decision. It's quite possible here that we'll never be able to resolve the differences simply because we're never going to have access to some of the basic information. That's clearly China's thing. Can we return back to the Department of Homeland Security for a second?

In some ways, is this an agency designed to fail? The range of missions is so large, and some of them deal with how do we help Americans after natural disasters, as opposed to all the things on the security side. It seems to me that we've created something that has so many different cultures and missions in it that, yeah, would we do it again, knowing what we now know? Is this the best way to try to tackle all the problems? Well, DHS, like everything in Washington, was a political compromise. In some ways, it went too far. In other ways, it didn't go far enough. And as I said earlier, the ideas were based on the circumstances that existed at the time.

Richard, DHS feels very big because it's got a lot of diverse cultures and missions, but it's a fraction of the size of the Department of Defense. It's even a fraction of the size of the Department of Defense. It's even a fraction of the size of the Department of the Army. And it is manageable as long as there are skilled component heads running each one of these departments, TSA, Secret Service, FEMA. And there is a common mission, which is to secure the homeland, public safety nationwide. And as long as you have skilled leadership, not distracted by the daily foolishness in Washington about, you know, with the rhetoric, it can be done. Can I say just one quick thing? Do you think it's seized with the mission of

dealing with the potential for domestic political terrorism? Do you think that's a big enough priority for DHS, what we homegrown now political challenge? The honest answer, Richard, is that DHS is not equipped to deal with domestic based political terrorism. That was not part of the thinking in 2003 when it was created. In 2003, we thought of terrorism as foreign terrorist organizations, al-Qaeda, then ISIS. And the task of dealing with domestic-based terrorism has fallen largely to the FBI. I'll ask you about the train derailment, Mr. Secretary, in East Palestine, Ohio. We're going to have Secretary Buttigieg on in just a little while on this show and ask him some questions about the administration's response. How do you believe the EPA? How do you believe the Department of Transportation? And yes, how has the president of the United States handled this

incident in Ohio? I'm sure that there are hundreds of federal officials on the ground right now from all of those departments dealing with this. A lot of people have pointed to the relaxation of rail safety regulations during the Trump administration. When it comes to the political leadership, President Biden, the first impulse after a tragedy like this or a natural disaster is for the president or even the secretary of DHS, I've got to go there. And then the head of FEMA will say, it's too early. If you go there, you will overwhelm the security situation there. You will draw from local first responders for your own security who are trying to deal with this.

Wait a few days. The sweet spot for a visit to East Palestine was probably while President Biden was in Ukraine. And then what often happens is there's pushback because the president or even the secretary thinks, if I go there now, it's just for political purposes. It's never too late, in my experience, for a president, and this president in particular particular knows how to do this. Empathy is natural to him. It's never too late to show up. The other thing I'll add is when people on the ground, federal officials on the ground know that the president is coming, you know, they work just a little harder because they want the president to hear good news stories

from the local population about what the feds are doing there when the president gets there. John, is the White House moving toward a presidential visit to East Palestine? They've said to be considering it now for for several days. Is that coming? That is still where they are considering it. We heard from President Biden almost acting defensive about it the other day, suggesting that it wasn't his, you know, that these regulations were rolled back on the Trump administration. He's right about that. But he said that that moment he had no plans to go. White House officials are talking about a possible visit. Nothing's on the books yet, but I could see sometime the next week or so the president, perhaps the vice president, makes that trip.

Well, as I said, we'll talk to Secretary Buttigieg in just a little bit. Mr. Secretary, we ran out of time to talk about your model train collection. I promise next time you're here, one of the largest on the eastern seaboard from what I hear. Former Secretary Jay Johnson. Thanks, Mr. Secretary. Still ahead this morning, a look at stories making front pages across the country. And at the top of the hour, we'll be joined by Maryland Governor Wes Moore, ahead of President Biden's stop in his state later today.

Morning Joe's coming right back. A few minutes before the top of the hour, beautiful shot of the sunrise over Washington, D.C. Time now for a look at the morning papers headlines across the country. We begin in Iowa, where the Des Moines Register reports 20 statehouse Republicans have introduced a bill to ban all abortions. The legislation states life begins at conception. Lawmakers, however, don't expect the bill to advance this year because they are waiting on the outcome of a state Supreme Court case over a law that bans most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy. In Rhode Island, the westerly sun highlights a new effort to approve a vaccine for RSV. A panel of FDA advisors narrowly voted in favor of Pfizer's RSV vaccine for adults over the age of 60 yesterday, despite some safety concerns. The FDA is expected to decide on approval of the vaccine by May.

In Indiana, the Indianapolis Star leads with a push to prosecute teachers and librarians who distribute banned books. The state Senate passed a bill that would charge educators in violation of the law with a felony that carries a maximum penalty of two and a half years in jail. Teachers would not be allowed to argue as a defense that the banned material has educational value. The bill would also create a new process for parents to request the removal of books they find inappropriate from school libraries. That's going to be a mess. And finally, the Baltimore Sun reports Maryland is in need of more black male teachers. Research shows that black students are more likely to graduate and attend college when they have teachers who look like them.

But in Maryland, teachers who are black men only account for four percent of the public school workforce, while 17 percent of students are black and male nationwide. Black and black men account for just a little over one percent of the teacher workforce work to do there coming up. A powerful House committee is set to hold a hearing this morning on legislation that could ban the popular app TikTok nationwide. We'll have a preview of that and a programming note next Wednesday. Morning Joe will be live from Abu Dhabi, where I will moderate an iconic conversation with Hillary Rodham Clinton at the Forbes 3050 Summit with Know Your Value. We together will speak with our keynote guests, Gloria Steinem, Billie Jean King and the first lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelenska, to explore their accomplishments and the path forward in the battle for women's equality. Watch this special next Wednesday at 7 a.m. Eastern, only here on Morning Joe. We'll be right back.